


Good Evening, Good Night

by lavenderlionlisa



Category: Frühlings Erwachen | Spring Awakening - Frank Wedekind, Spring Awakening - Sheik/Sater
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Language of Flowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-03
Updated: 2020-04-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:27:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23454013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlionlisa/pseuds/lavenderlionlisa
Summary: Martha and Ilse leave flowers on Moritz's grave.
Relationships: Ilse Neumann & Moritz Stiefel, Martha Bessell & Ilse Neumann, Martha Bessell & Moritz Stiefel
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Good Evening, Good Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Insertpoetryhere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Insertpoetryhere/gifts).



> I've been a fan of the Spring Awakening musical for a long time, but I only just got around to reading the play recently, and the scene of Martha and Ilse talking at Moritz's funeral made me really emotional. So I made this, mostly for myself and for Insertpoetryhere. Also, it's Spring Awakening, so content warnings for a child abuse mention, suicide mention, and some violent imagery. That's all, I think. Hope you like it!

Martha stood apart from the crowd at Moritz Stiefel’s funeral, on a fallen monument. Ilse Neuman was beside her, giving Moritz’s father a look that could make flowers wilt. Renter Stiefel was wailing something about how his son was nothing to him as he shoveled dirt into the grave. The words barely reached Martha through the pouring rain, but she could see how they filled Ilse with contempt. The person who was supposed to care for Moritz had abandoned his own son when he needed help the most, and was now blaming the child for it all. He couldn’t understand. He didn’t even try to understand. Could it be that Renter Stiefel reminded Ilse of her own father?

She shivered. Once Pastor Kaulbauch finished condemning Moritz in his speech, the men all shook Moritz’s father’s hand, offering empty words of sympathy, then turned their backs and began to leave. The rain stopped, as if it had followed them away.

Now it was the schoolboys’ turn to gather around the grave. They talked of Moritz’s death, but the subject soon turned to their Greek literature homework. Martha thought about how strange it felt to still have to go to school in the midst of all this, to sit in a classroom learning Queen Victoria’s floriography and pretend everything was like normal. The day after Moritz died, she had hardly spoken a word. Everything had gone by in a somber haze— no running, no laughter, just an unspoken heaviness over everything. Even when addressed by her teachers, she could barely answer above a whisper.

Moritz was gone.

The “soulful sleepyhead” was never waking up. He was a faint bit of light in Martha’s dark life, and that light had all at once gone out.

The men weren’t there, the schoolboys walked out of the graveyard, and Martha and Ilse were the only ones left behind. The still-open grave looked depressingly bare— Moritz, having died by suicide, wasn’t left any flowers by the congregation. The two girls had secretly planned to leave some there for him themselves.

When the others were out of sight, Ilse walked up to the grave. “Quick, quick! Here are the grave-diggers coming!”

Martha could still hear the schoolboys gossiping outside the cemetery gate, even if they weren’t visible from where they stood. “Hadn’t we better wait, Ilse?”

“What for?” She had a look of determination about her that was well beyond her years. “We’ll bring fresh ones. Always fresh ones. There are enough growing.”

For the first time that day, Martha smiled. “You’re right, Ilse!” She tossed down the wreath of ground-creeping ivy that she had gathered that morning. Ivy was a sturdy evergreen that grew in even the harshest conditions, a symbol of undying loyalty and affection. It was one of her favorite plants.

Ilse dropped her apron, and anemones of various colors tumbled down onto the lid of the coffin. They were symbols of death, forsaken love, protection from evil, and anticipation for the coming winds of spring. 

Martha thought of Aphrodite weeping over the death of Adonis, when her tears were said to have mixed with his blood to create the first anemones. Looking at Ilse, it was easy to imagine her in that role, a powerful goddess stricken to discover the young man she loved dying in a blood-soaked pasture. That would have to make Martha the goddess Persephone, seeing him only a third of the year, waiting all alone as he died in another’s arms. A goddess of spring, yet the Queen of the Underworld.

“I’ll dig up our roses,” she said. “I’ll be beaten for it!” A knot was forming in her stomach, but she didn’t let herself cry. Not yet. “They will be of some use here.”

“I’ll water them as often as I pass here,” Ilse promised. “I’ll fetch violets from the brook and bring some iris from our house.”

A message of love and hope. Now the tears were really threatening to spill. “It will be beautiful— beautiful!”

As soon as she got home, Martha went to the garden and found a plot of dark crimson roses. They looked fragile, choked on all sides by weeds. Such prized flowers, yet by the end of every summer they gave way to weeds. No one in her family had to coax the weeds to grow tall, yet they grew all the same. She thought of something she once said to the other girls at school: “If I ever have children I will let them grow up like the weeds in our flower garden.” Perhaps Moritz would be alive right now, she thought wistfully, if his father had done the same.

By the time her work uprooting the roses was done, the sun was getting low. She hurried back to the graveyard as fast as she could without being seen.

True to her word, Ilse had already brought the violets and irises. She was digging a place for them with a small spade when Martha arrived, but she promptly took a step back. “I’ll let you pay your respects.”

“Thank you, Ilse.” With her red roses in hand, Martha reached for a small empty space in the area Ilse had dug up. “May I?”

She gave a nod, and Martha placed the roses carefully in the arrangement, trying to create a sense of visual balance. She matted dirt around them and stood back, satisfied with their handiwork. If Pastor Kaulbauch was there, he would surely have said it was wrong. He had called Moritz someone who “lives for and serves evil,” yet here the girls were making a tribute to him anyway. If he had “died a triple death,” they had that much more to mourn.

Everything was quiet. Martha could see the moon coming up over the horizon. She thought about how she had to go back home soon. She began to notice just how tired she was.

And a melody— she thought of Brahams’s famous lullaby, remembering the words: “Guten abend, gute nacht, mit rosen bedacht.” Good evening, good night, bedecked with roses.

“Goodnight, Moritz,” she whispered as she walked out the gate.


End file.
